Down .4 Pounds

Yup, even though my scale at home said I had gained 2 lbs, the WW scale smiled upon me and said I was down .4 lbs! WooHoo!!!

We had a great meeting today about making our kitchens WW friendly. Have I mentioned how much I love my new leader? She is great! Very down to earth and loves interaction from members! Sad news today, Emilee, one of our newest Lifetimers is moving to Alabama. Her 87lb weight loss is such an inspiration to me. She was always full of new recipes and food finds. She will be missed.

I found a new blog to share with you all. Big Bottom Blogger ROCKS! Any woman that is willing to photo her booty and post it on her blog gets my vote for "blogger who bares their soul." And I love this quote from her blog, "Each day....I will work on overcoming my addiction to food and indolence.  You can cheer for me if you want...but don't put me up on a pedestel for crying out loud!!!  It is lonely up there....and is such a far way to fall!  From now on...I want to be on terra firma with everyone else who struggles with this journey on a day to day basis.  Deal?" Check her out!

Success! and Clean Eating

Stuck in Plateau-ville and growing frustrated, NO More! My leader suggested that I stop eating the WW bars, FiberPlus bars and other packaged foods for a week and see if that helped.

I did. I focused on "clean eating" for one week and am happy to report that it worked! I lost 4.4lbs even though we ate out 4 times last week! I still picked carefully on the menus, but WOW!

Maybe those health nuts who eat almond butter and oatmeal and fresh fruit and veggies actually do know what they are talking about? I'm trying it again this week and we will see what happens!

I even picked up "The Clean Eating Diet" book at Wal-Mart to get some new ideas. Still counting points though...WW has helped me lose over 50lbs, so I'm not giving that up either!

They also have a clean eating magazine that I'm going to check out!

Anyone else do the clean eating thing?


Thanks to Let Ideas Compete on Flickr.com for the photo!

Meal Planning Monday

Since I have been struggling with this plateau, I have been asking myself what was I doing before that I have not been doing lately. One of the things is menu planning. So, I was hanging out in the blog-o-sphere today and came across this super cute  monthly menu calendar at Controlling my Chaos. After spending a few minutes working with it in Photoshop, I have come up with my menu for the rest of the month. I challenged myself for the remainder of February to eat out of the freezer with the exception of milk, bread and fresh veggies. I'm planning on socking away the savings from grocery trips to try and do a big once a month shopping trip to cut the budget as well as my waistline!

What are you doing to save money and calories?

Offically in Plateauville

Well...it is official, I have hit a plateau. 10 weeks with plus or minus 2 lb weight gain/loss. My leader, Heather (AKA the world's greatest WW leader...my title for her), noticed that I was extra emotional during the meeting. She stopped me to find out what was up after the meeting. I told her I was frustrated, because I wasn't going any where lately. She looked at my book and declared...yup, I'm in Plateauville. Interestingly enough, my old leader showed up at our meeting this week too.

So, what to do? Heather suggested that I cut out all empty calories like the FiberPlus  and WW's bars and focus on "real" food. My old leader grabbed a WW's TurnAround Eating Guide and suggested that I focus on higher protein. So, I'm trying their suggestions.

My husband suggested that I up my exercise, but since I'm nursing a cold this week that is not happening.

I'm also wondering if the emotions might be due to PMS. Since I don't have regular periods, it is hard to know if or when one will happen. Lately, they have been coming more regular, twice within what would be considered a normal time frame. So, if it is going to show up on time...it could happen in the next few days and that would explain my emotions...then again, it may not happen... Oh, well....

Well, here is what I'm holding on to in the mean time... This was my family Christmas 2008. And here is my family Superbowl Sunday 2010...